Jamahal Hill: Referee Herb Dean Let Alex Pereira Take ‘Control of the Octagon’

Jamahal Hill recently shared his take on the now iconic scene where Alex Pereira brushed off referee Herb Dean moments before putting “Sweet Dreams” to down and out.

Hill (12-2) challenged Pereira for the light heavyweight title in the main event at UFC 300 earlier this month. Pereira absorbed a glancing low blow from Hill in the first round, brushed it off, stopped Dean from intervening, and proceeded to knock “Sweet Dreams” out immediately after.

Many, including former double champ Daniel Cormier, have questioned Dean’s handling of the situation, criticizing him for letting Pereira continue right after he had called time. Hill also believes Dean could have done things differently.

According to Hill, the intriguing moment had a role to play in his knockout loss against “Poatan.” Hill claims he slacked a little on hearing Dean call time, giving up angles, while Pereira kept advancing. While Hill doesn’t want to make excuses and credits Pereira for capitalizing on the moment, he would have preferred for Dean to properly reset them. Going forward, the Chicago native is also apprehensive of completely obeying the referee, after what he felt was Dean letting Pereira control the Octagon.

“It’s ‘protect yourself at all times,’ but like right after that [referees] tell you, it’s ‘obey my commands at all times,’ too,” Hill told The Schmo. “In the moment whenever it happened, I stopped, [Dean] said stop, before he interjected, I stopped. And you can see Alex continues to close the distance on me. So, I understand it’s a cold moment, he got hit in the nuts, he pushed it off and then he came [to score a knockout]. It wasn’t a groin strike and him closing the angle on me while I’m trying to check and make sure he’s good and things like that, it was a gritty, competitive move. Something I should have peeped, caught on to [and] protected myself against. If Herb Dean could have done anything I would have liked to have a more clean and better reset.

“The fact that that ref will give your opponent control of the Octagon like that, it makes me kind of think before I just straight up disengage and just obey a ref’s command like that. If am being honest. Like I said, I ain’t trying to make no excuse or anything but if there’s one thing that I look back on the fight, I would have done differently, it would have been kind of more so disregarded that command and stayed on my angle. The only steps that I took were in that moment where I was expecting a little bit of a break. [Dean] stepped behind me, so he wasn’t exactly in my line of sight when he gave the go-ahead signal, I did hear the “fight,” but it was little late, like if you hear in the video, people got a little loud and things like that.”

Veteran referee and mixed martial arts commentator John McCarthy, who also helped create the Unified Rules of MMA, defended Dean amidst the criticism. McCarthy noted that the fighter who has absorbed a low blow has complete authority to decide when they choose to resume the action.

It is inherently bad for the sport and unbelievably embarrassing to hear people who supposedly know the sport of MMA smear the actions of @HerbDeanMMA as if he was responsible for the knockout of @JamahalH @ufc 300.
Let’s make this as clear as possible for everyone. Herb was…

— Big John McCarthy (@JohnMcCarthyMMA) April 18, 2024

Nevertheless, hardly a week after his knockout loss against Pereira, Hill's next fight was confirmed against Khalil Rountree (13-5) in the UFC 303 co-main event on June 29. Hill wants to finish Rountree dominantly to make his case for a rematch against Pereira, which is admittedly more important for “Sweet Dreams” at the moment than a title shot.

“Honestly for me now it’s not even about the gold strap, it’s about getting back to that fight,” said Hill. “I want to fight with Alex again, just because of the narrative surrounding it and everything. And I know what I was feeling in there and I know what type of time I was really on when we stepped in there, so I just wanna get to that fight, that’s the fight that I want.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3xbmItNL1s